Heroes of Might and Magic V

Its Strange To think that Hemes of Might & Magic V came out just four years ago. The Might & Magic brand has been around for 24 years, and despite reinventing itself every now and then - Dark Messiah was an enjoyable distraction, for starters - the brand still feels slightly tainted by the dusty associations of old-school fantasy role-playing.

We didn't rate it so highly at launch, but the fifth edition of the real-time strategy arm of M&M ages surprisingly well. Perhaps it's because the bugs have been patched. Perhaps it's because the budget price lowers your expectations. Perhaps it's just a plain trick of the mind - but with a pinch of nostalgia and such a minimal cash outlay, HOMMV becomes a pleasure to re-explore.

As you'd expect from a mature universe, the game is set in a well-imagined and detailed fantasy world, that has six factions: the decent and corrupt wizards of Academy and Necropolis, high and dark elves from the Sylvan and Dungeon factions, with humans and demons taking their opposite places in the same way Human and Chaos do in Warhammer. (How vain are we, that wizards and elves can be pitted against evil versions of themselves, but humans need to cast themselves against something dead poetic?)

Each faction plays differently enough to make their own campaigns interesting, and there are dozens of hours of satisfying Warcraftm strategy to be wrung from the single-player game.

On top of that, the game's looks and musical score have withstood the test of time. That is, if you can call four years any kind of a serious test of time.